Allen,
Your math is also flawed.

$1,000,000 divided by 60 is not $13,333… it’s $16,667

My point is if we rezone areas like the mall under the traditional rezoning
process, they will be required to have 15% affordable housing already. No
money will need to be spent from our limited Affordable Housing Trust to
achieve 15%. That alone would save at least $833,000 from the Affordable
Trust for those 5 units that would be needed to get up to the 15%.

And if we want to make it an even higher percentage then we have almost a
million dollars to do so.

HCA rezoning is not beneficial to the town so it should be done in the
least impactful way to comply with the HCA, and if the town or a developer
wants to peruse further rezoning it should be done through the traditional
town meeting process.

Sarah Postlethwait


On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 1:50 PM Pastor Allen <pastorall...@gmail.com> wrote:

> One must remember that if a development has 25% or greater apartments that
> are "Affordable", then the entire community counts towards the SHI.  So, by
> moving Oriole Landing from 9 (15%) to 15 (25%) affordable units, we
> increased the official SHI in Lincoln by 60 units - at a cost of roughly
> $13,333 per unit.  That's quite a good return on that investment.
>
> -Allen Vander Meulen
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 2, 2023, at 11:04, Margaret Olson <s...@margaretolson.com> wrote:
>
> 
> Argh! Not enough coffee! At Oriole Landing 6 additional units is correct
> and each additional unit for a qualified person to live in cost $166K not
> 100K.
>
>
> ‪On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 10:17 AM ‫ٍSarah Postlethwait‬‎ <sa...@bayhas.com>
> wrote:‬
>
>>  Your math is flawed…
>>
>> The town already required 15% affordable housing units, or 9 total units
>> at Oriole landing. (See photo below from Oriole Landing’s analysis)
>>
>> This means that the town paid $1 million dollars to secure *6 additional
>> units- not 10, as you stated.*
>>
>> *Thats $166,667 a unit*.
>>
>> I understand that the town has worked hard to maintain well above 10%
>> affordable housing- which is why I don’t understand the desire to rezone
>> every developable acre of south Lincoln at 10% affordability.
>> Even with an additional $2 million in our Affordable Housing Trust to
>> bribe developers, that will only secure 12 additional units if Oriole
>> Landing is an indicator of what Civico is expecting per unit.
>>
>> The RLF is proposing up to 100 additional units.
>> 10 are required to be affordable under HCA
>> An additional 5 units (15% total) will cost $833k
>> And additional 15 units (25% total) will cost $2.5 million
>>
>> And that’s assuming they haven’t raised their affordable housing bribe
>> expectations since 2018.
>>
>> *This is why the HCA rezoning should be done in the least impactful way
>> possible, and rezoning things like the mall and other likely to be
>> redeveloped areas should be done through the traditional process that
>> already requires 15% affordable housing.* That will save almost a
>> million dollars from the Affordable Housing trust per every 100 units
>> built.
>>
>> <image_123650291.JPG>
>>
>> Sarah Postlethwait
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 9:49 AM Margaret Olson <s...@margaretolson.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's a bit more background on the Oriole Landing affordable units:
>>>
>>> There are 15 affordable units out of a total of 60 units, or 25%
>>> With 25% affordable, all 60 units count towards our SHI (the state's
>>> affordable housing index)
>>> Our zoning requires 15% affordable
>>>
>>> At a cost of $1 million the town obtained 10 additional affordable units
>>> for qualifying people to live in at a cost of 100K each, with 60
>>> affordable units counting towards our SHI at a cost of $16K per unit. At
>>> the time this was negotiated the town was paying an average of $250K for
>>> each affordable unit for qualifying people to live in.
>>>
>>> By keeping our SHI above 10% we are not subject to "40B" developments:
>>> 40B is the state law that allows developers to ignore town zoning density
>>> restrictions for multi-family buildings. The town has historically worked
>>> very hard to maintain an SHI above 10%. We are currently over 12%.
>>>
>>> Margaret
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 9:27 AM Benjamin Shiller <benshil...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> After posting, additional data was very quickly brought to my
>>>> attention.  Apparently, even without a 1 million dollar forgivable loan,
>>>> the rate of return on the investment was anticipated to be 14%.  That seems
>>>> very high, and was the expected return on investment at that time.  Yes,
>>>> home prices went up, increasing their profits. But that does not change the
>>>> fact that it would certainly appear that the $1 million forgiveable loan
>>>> seems unnecessary.  I now join the call for more transparency and citizen
>>>> involvement in future negotiations.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 8:54 AM Benjamin Shiller <benshil...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The stated numbers in earlier messages in this thread suggest that
>>>>> Civico earned about $8-$12 million in profits from Oriole Landing.  If
>>>>> true, it still does not necessarily imply that we were ripped off as a
>>>>> town. It might have been that we needed to provide the $1 million
>>>>> forgivable loan to make it such that the *expected* profits at that time
>>>>> were high enough to build.  First, the profits need to be as high as
>>>>> the developer could have earned elsewhere. Second, there’s an ex-ante
>>>>> ex-post problem.  After building, real estate prices in Massachusetts
>>>>> increased dramatically, implying that the profits that they ultimately
>>>>> earned may be much higher than the profits that would have been reasonably
>>>>> anticipated.  All that said, it’s still good basic economic practice to 
>>>>> get
>>>>> many developers to make competing bids.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> >*From Civico’s own documentation (link below), they estimated the
>>>>>> total *development cost per condo was $351K (including acquisition
>>>>>> costs). This means that it would have cost them ~$21M to complete the
>>>>>> 60-unit development. Considering the $1M loan and the sale price of $32M,
>>>>>> Civico made ~$12M in only 4 years on a $20M investment, in addition to 
>>>>>> any
>>>>>> rents collected. 60% return on assets seems pretty profitable to me. This
>>>>>> doesn’t even include the benefit they would have gotten from any 
>>>>>> leverage.
>>>>>> I am not comparing the project itself to the Winchester project. What
>>>>>> I am pointing to is that Winchester was able to negotiate a deal with
>>>>>> Civico that includes a $1.5M payment from Civico to the town, as well as
>>>>>> other concessions like more affordable units and extra parking. 
>>>>>> Winchester
>>>>>> was able to negotiate this because the project had to go through town
>>>>>> meeting. In fact, the first time, it failed the vote, and only passed on
>>>>>> the second round after these concessions were made.
>>>>>> I would like to repeat what I said in my first post: I am not against
>>>>>> redeveloping the mall. What I do continue to find troubling is that we 
>>>>>> are
>>>>>> being pushed into rezoning the mall through HCA, because a developer said
>>>>>> that they would not go through town meeting.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rezoning the mall through HCA would eliminate our ability to vote on
>>>>>> the project and extract concessions from developers. Additionally, we 
>>>>>> have
>>>>>> been told we would apply for public grants to benefit private developers.
>>>>>> Let’s learn from the experience of Winchester and not eliminate the
>>>>>> strength of our town meeting process.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ben
>>>>>
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